When: Thursday, May 4, 2023, 8:15 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. EDT 

Where: Renaissance Hotel, Washington, DC

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The News/Media Alliance is happy to be partnering with Economic Liberties on the Anti-Monopoly Summit. We invite our Alliance members to attend the Summit on May 4, 2023 at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington D.C. This Summit will bring together the growing anti-monopoly movement in a marquee one-day conference to build power and engage with senior policymakers from across the country.

Description:

The anti-monopoly movement has swelled in prominence in recent years. Historic appointments at the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, and the White House, alongside bipartisan leadership in Congress and President Biden’s July 2021 Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the U.S. launched a successful all-of-government agenda to arrest corporate power.

For more information, visit antimonopolysummit.org.

Keynote speakers include:

• Amy Klobuchar, Senator for the State of Minnesota
• Lael Brainard, Director, National Economic Council
• Lina Khan, Chair, Federal Trade Commission
• Jonathan Kanter, Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, Department of Justice
• Jennifer Abruzzo, General Counsel, National Labor Relations Board
• Summer Lee, Representative for the State of Pennsylvania
• Doha Mekki, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, Department of Justice
• Elizabeth Wilkins, Chief of Staff to the Chair and Director, Office of Policy and Planning, Federal Trade Commission
• Patrick Spence, CEO of Sonos
• More speakers coming soon.

Organizations supporting the event include Common Future, Demand Progress, Digital Content Next, Future of Music Coalition, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, National Community Pharmacists Association, National Grocers Association, News/Media Alliance, Small Business Majority, Economic Security Project, Kauffman Foundation, Omidyar Network.

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Danielle Coffey, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the Alliance, stated: “As AI applications become more prevalent in our society, we need to establish clear principles that govern the responsible development and use of these new technologies and applications. We are proud to join this coalition of like-minded organizations and will continue to advocate diligently for regulations and law to protect creators with respect to AI in the same manner it does with respect to other technologies and industries.”

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Image credit: Oleksii Didok / iStock/Getty Images Plus via Getty Images

It is not a stretch to say that programmatic advertising and the broader suite of advertising technology (or ad tech) has harmed publishers in multiple ways. Whether due to the system’s monopolization by the largest tech platforms, the ability for bad actors to manipulate the system for profit,  or unscrupulous vendors playing on advertisers’ fears, it seems wherever you look, you can find evidence of the adverse impact of ad tech companies’ actions on publishers. A new report out in January gives us hope, however, that things may be looking up.

In 2020, the UK’s Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA), working with PwC, published a landmark study tracking ad tech spend, the findings of which were very disturbing to publishers. Among the findings was an “unknown delta” of 15 percent of advertising spend that could not be attributed to either the buyers or sellers in the ad tech value exchange. The fact that publishers were only receiving 51 percent of advertiser spend was also cause for alarm. As we wrote at the time, “This study should act as a clarion call to publishers, advertisers and the ad tech community that the system as it stands does not work as it should.”

At least to some extent, that call has been heard and we hope to see the improvements continue.

In addition, last month the two organizations reported “positive and welcome improvements” in the second round of the study, conducted in 2022.

They found, among other increased benefits:

• “Improvements in data access successfully halved the time required to conduct the study to nine months (vs. 18 months for the 2020 study).
• Greater standardisation of data quality improved the ad impression match rate to 58% (vs. 12% in 2020) and the unattributable ad spend (AKA the unknown delta) was reduced to 3% (vs. 15% in 2020).
• The proportion of advertiser spend reaching publishers has risen by 8%.”

However, there are still many places where the deck remains stacked against publishers. As AdExchanger reported, “PwC itself has room to grow as an auditor” to better understand and audit more transactions. And publishers still take less than two-thirds of advertising dollars spent, with companies that are not involved in content creation taking a large share of the advertising placed against it.

While the report’s findings are welcome and positive, all parties have a responsibility to continue to advocate – voting with their voices and their dollars – for a stronger system for ad-supported news and content.

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Photo credti: tomwachs / e+ via Getty Images

When: Wednesday, February 15, 2023, 9:30 a.m. EST – this event has passed

Where: Marriott Marquis, Washington, DC

Join the Open Markets Institute, News/Media Alliance, and other co-hosts for a keynote speech from U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on how far our antimonopoly movement has come and the fights that lay ahead to rebuild our democracy.

Description:

Warren’s pivotal 2016 speech on antimonopoly at another Open Markets event helped spur policymakers into action. Because of her work and the work of our broader movement, more recognize that workers’ rights, racial justice, climate change, freedom of media and journalism, digital platforms and privacy abuses, artistic liberty, industrial policy, economic resiliency and supply chain issues, peace and security, and our very democracy, are all set back by an extreme concentration of corporate power. And all can be tremendously improved by reining in corporate monopolies.

Hosted by the Open Markets Institute, Senator Warren’s remarks are part of an important, day-long conference that will explore the power of antimonopoly principles to renew American democracy, strengthen our economy, & construct a more peaceful & sustainable world.

Other featured speakers include:

• Jonathan Kanter, Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, who recently brought a critically important suit against Google’s monopolization of digital advertising;
• Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and the president of PEN America, whose book “Homeland Elegies” describes how monopolists bulldozed American society;
• Sara Nelson, International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO, who takes on the airline monopolies daily on behalf of her union’s 50K members;
• and many more

Organizations supporting the event include Color of Change, the Financial Times, Public Citizen, as well as Americans for Financial Reform, Accountable Tech, Demand Progress, Economic Security Project, Fight Corporate Monopolies and the American Economic and Civil Liberties Project, Free Press, Future of Music Coalition, Groundwork Collaborative, News/Media Alliance, Public Knowledge, and the Revolving Door Project. 

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“This marks an important day in our history where a dominant monopoly is being charged for blatantly anticompetitive behavior in the digital advertising market. This behavior impacts consumers’ data, prices, and the quality of information they receive, while journalism struggles to provide valuable and critical content that informs and enriches communities across the country,” said News/Media Alliance Executive Vice President & General Counsel, Danielle Coffey.

For many years, the News/Media Alliance has sounded the alarm on this issue through testimony and written filings, including its white paper, “How Google Abuses Its Position as a Market Dominant Platform to Strong-Arm News Publishers and Hurt Journalism,” published in 2020 and revised in September 2022, which substantiates Google’s dominance in the marketplace, including member news publisher accounts of anticompetitive practices. Google’s take from publishers is up to 70 percent of every advertising dollar received. This has a significant impact on what news publishers and magazines receive for their content.

Coffey continued, “Along with this antitrust lawsuit, legislation like the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCPA) is sorely needed to address these marketplace imbalances. The lawsuit draws a direct nexus between the anticompetitive practices and those who are harmed, notably the free press. We applaud the DOJ and various states that have filed this historic case during a time of critical importance to our industry and others impacted by these practices.”

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On June 11, Alliance President and CEO David Chavern testified before the House Judiciary Committee on “Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 1: The Free and Diverse Press,” a hearing about the impact tech platforms like Google and Facebook have on news publishers. You can watch our highlight reel above.

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Alliance CEO and President David Chavern testified before the U.S. House of Representatives during a hearing on June 11, 2019, titled, “Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 1: The Free and Diverse Press.” In the above clip, Chavern responds to a question from Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-RI) about the increase in news readership compared to the loss of revenue.

Chavern’s response: “Present trends can’t continue. If we continue on this path, we’re going to lose vast amounts of quality journalism, particularly in communities all around the country. That’s not just a bad business outcome, that is utterly destructive to our civic society and can’t be allowed to happen. What we’ve asked for is a chance, a chance for a different kind of future, and we need that future, collectively.”

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Washington Post writer Jonathan Capehart (left) moderates a discussion of the “Journalism Competition and Preservation Act” between Reps. David Cicilline (center) and Doug Collins (right)

On April 4, House Antitrust Chairman David Cicilline (D-RI) and Representative Doug Collins (R-GA), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, were part of a panel at The Washington Post‘s #PostLive event, “Protecting Local News.” The Congressmen spoke with Post writer Jonathan Capehart about the the “Journalism Competition and Preservation Act,” which the pair had introduced in the House on April 3.

You can watch the discussion between Capehart, Cicilline and Collins below, and view other panels from the event here.

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We rely on a healthy news media to keep us informed and to ensure transparency from our leaders. But as news has moved online and brought audiences that are larger than ever, it has become clear that the digital deck is actually stacked against quality journalism.

For nearly a decade, a couple of technology giants — namely, Facebook and Google — have exerted unprecedented influence and control over the U.S. news industry. These tech giants, as well as others, now control both the distribution and monetization of online news content.

The platforms have this power over the news media because of the rate at which they’ve expanded in recent years. These companies have grown with the assistance of serial acquisitions and exclusionary conduct aimed at nascent competitors and technologies that threaten to supplant their positions.  Therefore, we are pleased to see the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is taking a closer look at the tech giants’ anticompetitive conduct.

Yesterday, the News Media Alliance submitted comments to the FTC for its upcoming hearings, in which we explain in detail how the platforms’ conduct impacts journalism and harms consumers.

Today’s News Distribution Landscape

Historically, news publishers had a direct relationship with their readers – they printed a product and then literally handed it to customers. Today, the vast majority of consumers find online news content through one of two sources: search engines and social media. Google and Facebook are monopolists in those two markets; together, they account for more than 80 percent of referrals to digital news publications.

Google and Facebook now control what news consumers around the country see. This puts them in a position of enormous — indeed, unprecedented — power. While the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting the public’s access to particular sources of information, there is nothing stopping either Google or Facebook from doing the same thing.

The tech giants exploit this lack of oversight by using secret algorithms to decide which news articles appear in a user’s search results and social media feed, and they have the power to manipulate these algorithms to suit any purpose. In doing so, they make editorial judgments about the accuracy, relevance and newsworthiness of the content on their sites, including that being created and shared by news publishers.

Publishers have little to no leverage when dealing with the tech giants. Because the platforms have incredible market dominance, they have the power to dictate terms for the distribution and monetization of digital news content, and individual publishers have no way to resist.

The platforms are forcing the publishers’ hands. Publishers who don’t go along with Facebook and Google’s preferred programs will, without question, miss out on critical revenue streams. For example, when The Wall Street Journal pulled out of Google’s First Click Free program, its traffic from Google plunged 44 percent.

There have been some legislative efforts to help put news publishers on more equal footing by creating a limited safe harbor under the antitrust laws so they could collectively negotiate with big tech platforms; Congressman David Cicilline (D-RI) introduced the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act in March 2018, which would do just that. However, until any such bills become law, the need for vigorous FTC enforcement remains paramount.

What Should be Done About It

The platforms are engaging in anticompetitive activities by forcing publishers to adopt their practices or suffer the consequences; Google forces publishers to adopt practices that benefit Google’s monopoly positions in search and ad tech, while Facebook imposes similarly anticompetitive conditions, such as refusing to feature articles in its newsfeed unless the publisher implements Facebook’s preferred format and forcing publishers to pay to have their content elevated.

It has long been established that this type of behavior, the purpose of which is to restrict competition, is not exempt from regulation.

Further erosion of quality news would have dire consequences for society. This is why we believe the FTC should scrutinize potentially anticompetitive conduct by the platforms. The tech giants’ current behavior reduces output and innovation in news, and we believe that it is up to the FTC, under their consumer protection authority, to ensure that consumers are not misled by platforms’ content prioritization choices.

Impact on Quality of News

The dominant tech platforms, through their opaque algorithms and arbitrary editorial decisions about what content viewers see and when, have played a central role in the proliferation of click-bait journalism and fake news.

The platforms have created a world where anyone can pass off online content as news. The result is a tide of false and pseudo news littering the information stream. This leads to a confused, less-informed and — as we’ve seen with recent political elections — divided public. In fact, this degradation of news quality threatens our democratic discourse.

The platforms’ control over revenue streams leaves publishers with fewer resources to reinvest in the expensive business of delivering quality journalism — journalism that can help the public understand what is happening in the world and expose practices that might otherwise go undetected.

When scrutinizing the tech platforms for potentially anticompetitive conduct, the FTC should consider whether such conduct that restricts the output of quality journalism, because if the degradation of the news industry is permitted to continue to the benefit of the platforms, it is almost impossible to overstate the consequences.

The post It’s Time to Rein in the Tech Platforms’ Anticompetitive Behavior appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

The conversation between government anti-trust officials, journalists, publishers, lawyers and subject-matter experts focused on the ongoing battle between publishers and platforms, and how the platforms have the power to both help and harm publishers.

The speakers held a multitude of views on the platform monopoly, from those who believe the problem is nonexistent to those who feel that only government oversight can correct the problem. We’ve collected some of the key questions raised by the event’s panelists that will make you think about the relationship between platforms and publishers in a new way.

Should we look beyond the consumer welfare lens?

Makan Delrahim, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust at the Department of Justice, opened the conference by ruminating on the standard used to determine whether a business has achieved monopoly status. “The suggestion is that perhaps [anti-trust] enforcers should broaden the consumer welfare lens to think about effects on democracy or expression,” Delrahim said.

“We shouldn’t go down that road,” he said in response. “Enforcement actions purportedly aimed at supporting our democracy carry too great a risk of inadvertently undermining our constitutional values.

“We don’t need to go beyond the consumer welfare standard — it can get the job done on its own,” he continued. “There are serious risks to democracy in abandoning the consumer welfare standard..”

Political parties, Delrahim said, each have their own ideas of what is good for democracy, and by changing the anti-trust rules to include constitutionally protected rights, we run the risk of those parties using non-trust–related motives to hinder businesses from growing. Instead of thinking about what’s best for the consumer, enforcers may be compelled to think about what’s best for their party and politics.

What kind of business can be a monopoly?

“The argument is that, ‘because [the platforms] are free, [they] can’t be a monopoly that’s harmful to consumers,’” said Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next.

But, as Kint noted, the platforms do have a monopoly on data — and, thus, on ad dollars. Google and Facebook collect data from millions of people, giving them an edge when it comes to attracting advertisers. In fact, combined, the platforms receive between 85 and 90 percent of all digital ad spending.

Meanwhile, Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed, said that the platforms aren’t the enemy. “Google and Facebook are simply the most successful companies to capitalize on the fall of newspapers,” he said.

News organizations were struggling long before the digital platforms came along, Smith explained, so we can’t blame them for all of our problems. In many respects, they’re simply savvier businesses than we expected them to be.

Does that clear the platforms of monopoly status? It depends on how you choose to think of what makes a monopoly.

Who should decide what’s news?

Julia Angwin, an investigative reporter most recently with ProPublica, noted that one of the issues media companies have with the platforms is that they are now determining what is news. “Most journalism is hot takes. There’s a huge pile-on of everyone writing the same story,” Angwin said. “These are all attempts to game the algorithm. Essentially, journalism has become a game of how to game the algorithm as opposed to what is the news that you would need to [know].

“But the thing that is most disturbing is the outsourcing of trust to the tech companies. Essentially, we as the news business have said, ‘You know what? The tech companies are going to get to decide what is the trustworthy news.’ They get to rank it, they get to sort it, they get to tell you what is the most important thing.”

Angwin noted that while the groups of people who determined what went into a newspaper in the past weren’t always right about what was the most important news, at least there was intentionality behind their decisions. Now as a society, we’re letting an algorithm — something devoid of intent or original thought — make those decisions, and the algorithms have taken over the news business.

Mark Thompson, CEO of The New York Times Corporation, later noted that “platforms strip away essential signals about editorial intentionality,” arguing, like Angwin, that while journalists and editors aren’t perfect, algorithms are at least as flawed as their human counterparts.

Is one system better than the other? It depends on your goal. If the goal is to garner the most traffic, it’s clear that the algorithms will help you achieve that, but if the goal is to deliver the most pertinent news, that might not be the case.

Are journalists part of the problem?

Robert Thomson, CEO of News Corp, said that the media may be part of the problem of “algorithmic angst,” as he called the platform issue. “Media must also tend to its reputation,” he said. “Our reporters have to create compelling content and be seen to have the objective of being objective. That is particularly the case in an age of bluster and bombast. Our journalists have to be renaissance reporters willing to traverse platforms to ensure that the story is told where people are reading or listening or watching.

“Journalists should be wary of being too self-referential or self-reverential,” he added. “Journalism is about society, not about self.”

Only when journalists are willing to take responsibility for their part in the platform problem can we find a real solution.

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